Pronunciation question (from L. Urdang)

[Laurence Urdang]

>From many years' living in England, I can attest to the appearance of a glottal stop almost anywhere in a word, a phenomenon that started in Estuary English and has spread to the West End.  But my comments on didn't were restricted to American English.
  Laurence Urdang

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Pronunciation question (from L. Urdang)
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On 5/29/07, James Harbeck wrote:
> I've heard "dId at nt" maybe once or twice, maybe. "dIdInt" in emphatic
> use seems normal enough to me. The most interesting version was a
> BE-styled emphatic from a character in an episode of _Law & Order_:
> "dI'Int" (apostrophe for glottal stop). Is this being heard much by
> those who listen in those circles? It's foreign to me.

Check the archives for a long thread on the topic in Nov. '04...

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0411c&L=ads-l#4

--Ben Zimmer

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